Manchester City face Real Madrid on Tuesday in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final. It pits Pep Guardiola against Carlo Ancelotti once again, two great coaches with completely different ways of doing their job. Which way will win out this time around?
Real Madrid’s comeback against Manchester City in last season’s semi-final was chaotic in the extreme. Some speculated that it was the magic of the Bernabeu. How else to explain what they had just witnessed? Certainly, nobody thought it was the tactics.
In the final minute of the 90, star striker Karim Benzema had roamed to the right flank and then to the left, popping up out wide to centre the ball for substitute Rodrygo to score the first of the two goals that Madrid needed to level the tie. The rest was history.

The margins were maddeningly small. Pep Guardiola bemoaned his misfortune, bereft that this cup competition continues to confound his genius - as it has for over a decade now. Carlo Ancelotti raised an eyebrow. He would be the one dancing on the pitch in Paris.
The contrast between these two is irresistible but let us begin with the comparison. Both are former midfielders who lifted this trophy as players. Both have won it as a manager, Guardiola twice with Barcelona. Ancelotti twice with Milan and twice with Madrid.

If City win this forthcoming tie home and away, Guardiola will go level with Sir Alex Ferguson on 102 Champions League victories as a coach. There would then be only one man ahead of him on the list. That man is Ancelotti, his counterpart in the Bernabeu on Tuesday.

If City win this forthcoming tie home and away, Guardiola will go level with Sir Alex Ferguson on 102 Champions League victories as a coach. There would then be only one man ahead of him on the list. That man is Ancelotti, his counterpart in the Bernabeu on Tuesday.

While Guardiola's rivalry with Jurgen Klopp has been a feature of the Premier League and his time in Spain was shaped by his antagonism with Jose Mourinho, it is he and Ancelotti who are the two men to have contested the most Champions League semi-finals.

Theirs too is a rivalry of ideas because they represent two very different ways of doing this job. The stylistic contrast is not as overt but it might just be more intriguing because the difference between them is about more than tactics, it is about principles.